The New-Look Autopsy. Cleaned up and expanded blog articles, support and other material for a variety of games in a more screen/tablet friendly format.
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All great stories rise out of conflict and, as anyone who wasn’t homeschooled knows, school is full of conflict. This means you can have plenty of adventure without even having to break out the man-eating doll-spiders or bands of killer non-copyright infringing smurf-like micro-demons.
Students Vs Staff
The teachers are, obviously, in positions of authority and that puts them in immediate opposite with students who would rather build paper aeroplanes, sleep, text, smoke, get high, get drunk or cop a feel off each other behind the bike sheds. Some teachers are always worse than others however and certain teachers are set up to be the character’s arch nemesi.
Miss Encephela is an obvious choice, Mr Punch likes to hide away and she’s a hideous, octopoid bitch. She hates children and will go out of her way to come up with cruel and unusual punishments.
Madame Gorget also makes for a nasty and troublesome teacher who is ready to dish out punishments, usually after shouting at the student in a variety of incomprehensible languages, Like Miss Encephela she has a horrific edge which adds tension to her tirades.
Mr McBastard is less sinister and more angry, which makes him good for shouting and/or headbutting people. Given that corporal punishment is still applied in magical schools, he can be scarier than his conventional appearance might suggest.
Mr Noot on the other hand is a complete walkover and can be thoroughly bullied by the students with virtual impunity. As a victim he makes a good comedic punching bag compared to the nastier teachers.
Clique Vs Clique
As well as the specific cliques mentioned in prior articles there are always broad cliques based on academic accomplishment, popularity, fashion and music choices, remedial education status, sexiness, sexuality and just about any division you care to think of. Kids hatred and cruelty to each other is boundless and a rich source of bitter conflict that can last for years and scar for a lifetime, all without anyone getting killed!
School Vs School
Occasionally some teachers, educators or governments get funny ideas about ‘encouraging competition’ and try to get schools to play games against each other or engage in competitions. Cantrip Comprehensive tends to suck at Bigpitch and private schools do so very much love to ‘stick it to the oils’ but they’re willing to be underhanded more than the more privileged and there’s more than one thing they can compete at. Brutality can make up for a lot.
Staff Vs Staff
Teachers often clash over what they think is fair and over educational ideology. Some hate kids, some love them. Some believe in a soft approach, some a hard approach. Some like to punish, others to reward. Some like to threaten, others like to inspire. Canny students can latch on to a favourite teacher in a favourite subject and set the staff against each other, getting away with murder in the crossfire.
School Vs Town
The town is deeply suspicious of the school and the odd people that go there. It might be a Comprehensive but it doesn’t take in people from the local area. What’s all that about then eh? Plus the kids who go there seem to think they’re better than everyone else, which is bound to get someone’s back up. While the local shops are happy to take their money the local youths – and others – have their eye open for trouble, or the opportunity to cause it.
School Vs Government
Schools are subject to a lot of examination and scrutiny and every time the wind changes so does educational policy. It’s no different for magical schools and inspectors, interfering PTA groups and government secretaries are likely to turn up and put the school’s funding or existence under question from time to time. Students and staff will have to club together to keep these evil forces of bureaucracy out of their business.
As well as the staff it’s worth noting particular personalities within the current student body at Cantrip Comprehensive, indeed they’re likely to have much more of an impact on the characters than even the staff.
The Circle of Smoke
Found lurking in the bathrooms and behind the sheds, wherever they’re – probably – out of sight and screened by anti-scrying charms, the Circle of Smoke gathers to inhale tobacco, marijuana and anything else that can be smoked or inhaled. If you want to score they’re the people to go to but they’re pretty secretive and like to hide. When they’re high they get up to hinjinx but most of the time they’re very, very careful, wary of being sent to the detention dimension for transgressing the written and unwritten laws of the school.
Of the circle the leader is Ross Gray, permanently high he’s lost in a fug of drug-induced stupor and lets off magic seemingly randomly in the midst of his giggle fits. There’s no drug or mythical substance he can’t get hold of from unicorn horns to troll blood and everything in between, if you can put up with his short term memory loss.
Ted the Exstrange Student
Controversial, but promoted by the government, the Exstrange program brings the semi-supernatural creatures from the rest of the Shadow World into the Wizkid education programme as a way of trying to understand them and bring them under control. Ted is a Sparkler Bloodsucker with emo-hair and many sets of identical black silk shirts and leather jackets. The girls love him and they love him so much he feels like he can’t let on that he’s gay for fear of losing his popularity, the only thing that’s stopping some students from turning him into a newt and tossing him into a cauldron.
Sharon Enchante
Half Nymph, Sharon has gorgeous waist-length chestnut hair and a figure that has inspired many male students to actually learn geometry in order to properly describe it. A brilliant student and a skilled athlete (gymnastics) this is all ignored due to the fact that there’s a school legend going around that she’ll show you her tits for a tenner. Nobody’s yet dared find out if that’s true but given that she’s in the second year of the sixth form if anyone is going to dare they’ll have to dare soon. Of course, her father is a warlock with the Department of Magic(k)al Justice, so that really may not be a good idea.
Kyan Stane
Kyan is utterly hopeless at magic but what he lacks in mystic power he makes up for in physical strength and borderline psychopathy. To many it seems like Kyan’s almost been designed to be the perfect school bully and he takes an astounding amount of glee in spoiling people’s day, beating people up and making class and break time a living nightmare from which there’s no escape.
AntiChris
A half-demon, AntiChris is a shifty, shitty, obnoxious individual with all the social skills of a wolverine and the appeal of a baboon’s arse. That said, his dad is proud of his son and is more than willing to trade favours or make deals through AntiChris for anything you might want. Booze, porn, knives, guns, magic spells, curses, demonic pacts, you name it, he can get it. AntiChris is also the school encyclopaedia of sexist, racist and sick jokes, of which he always has two or three to hand.
The Bigpitch Team
Bigpitch isn’t as big a deal in the comprehensives as it is in the private wizarding schools. Indeed it’s thought of as a nerdy, girly sport and dismissed in favour of Magic Rules Football. Most schools still have a Bigpitch team anyway, but it’s regarded in much the same way Badminton or Polo are considered in the mundane world.
Cantrip Comprehensive fields a Bigpitch team but it’s made up of those who can’t or won’t play any ‘real’ sports and they don’t really play Bigpitch, save when invited to compete by another school. Mostly they just prance around a field pretending to practice and talking nonsense.
Jedamiah Wood is the captain of the Bigpitch team and has dreams of actually making the sport cool and taking his team to the top. He’s the only one out of the bookish, asthmatic or work-shy team that actually gives a damn and his enthusiasm, while not infectious, is indefatigable.
The Three Bitches
Tamara, Diana and Harriet are the Three Bitches, a trio of ‘reformed’ witches who play up their gothy, spooky image to out-emo the other brooding kids of the school. ‘When shall we three meet again’ is answered by ‘In room 102 every lunchtime’ which is where they hold meeting of their LGBTAP (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transexual, Asexual and Parthenogenic) support society. They’re the only members and it’s really just a cover for gossip, hexing and reading prohibited magazines. Nonetheless, they have a scary image which they positively encourage to be spread around.
The Prefects
Sometimes good families fall on hard times. The kids from this families in good standing that lose money on the stock market or poorly thought out alchemical ventures are extended a sop by being made prefects, backing up the teachers to keep order in the halls and theoretically acting as the school’s first line of defence against supernatural threats.
The leader of the Prefects is Tarkers VanDerSnoot of the Merlinical VanDerSnoots. They took a financial pounding when the bottom fell out of unicorn futures and he’s the first and only VanDerSnoot to have to attend a comprehensive, something that he hates. Composed, collected, dignified, with floppy blonde hair and a Hugh Grant accent, Tarkers cuts a dashing figure but beneath that cool, calm, collected exterior is a seething ball of resentment waiting to explode when he’s pushed too far.
Postmortem Studios 